Once, I met Scott Carpenter, one of the Original 7 Astronauts.

For a while in 2017 and 2018, I did some trolling on Nextdoor.com.

If you’re not familiar with Nextdoor, it’s a social network where your membership in various groups is based on your residence’s address. You can only see posts in your “neighborhood” and surrounding “neighborhoods”.

Nextdoor’s contents have been described as “stray cats and racism”.

I have four algorithms in my second attempt at writing algorithmic “players” for the game of Squava:

1. Alpha-beta minimaxing
2. Alpha-beta minimaxing with a better static evaluation function
3. Monte Carlo Tree Search
4. Monte Carlo Tree Search with UCT child selection

At this point, all but plain MCTS (#3 above) regularly beat me. How do my programmatic squava players do against each other?

Algorithmic players Elo ratings

I got an ad that featured this disturbing image.

The Ediger family has a new pet!

I’d like every one to welcome…

Have you ever read the Narnia books, or have you only read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe?

If so, you really ought to read Laura E. Weymouth’s The Light Between Worlds.

Here’s a video (youtube of course) review of both Starship Troopers the movie, and Starship Troopers the book.

It’s long, but worth it.

When I was maybe 11, some folks bought the hillside north of my parents’ house. The head of this new household, named Monte, had a 1940s bulldozer. He carved out the hillside to create a flat zone, maybe half an acre, for their house.

As part of putting in a dwelling, Monte and some friends and/or relatives dug a well in that flat zone.

I grew up in Kirksville, Missouri, the largest town within an 88 mile radius. Had to go to Hannibal, or Quincy or Columbia to get to a larger town.

But I’ve also had a life-long love of Bob Marley’s reggae music.